Baltic Cinema: Werckmeister Harmonies

Dir. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky Hungary 2000 145’ (cert 12)

Hungarian with English subtitles | 35mm transferred to digital video

To mark the passing of visionary director Béla Tarr earlier this month, we present the haunting, brooding and all-consuming masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies. A must for fans of early David Lynch, in particular, whose Eraserhead bears direct comparison for both the atmosphere it conjures and its tactility.

‘Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance.

Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. In thirty-nine hypnotic long takes engraved in ghostly black and white, auteur Béla Tarr and co-director-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.’

— Criterion

‘A second viewing of Werckmeister Harmonies reveals to me something in it more concrete about fascism and the sleep of reason, about the longing to submit to power which lurks just below the surface, to which humanity might so easily surrender, as if in a somnambulist trance … Werckmeister Harmonies may be Tarr’s masterpiece (and some of his followers might even have the heretical suspicion that it achieves as much in two-and-a-half hours as the great Sátántangó in seven.’

— ★★★★★ Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 2024

Watch the trailer.

Doors open 14:00; Film starts 14:15. Baltic Kitchen is open for drinks, which you are welcome to take up to the cinema.

Please note we cannot offer refunds on this event.

Baltic Cinema is a new year-round cinema programme at Baltic, lighting up our Level 1 Cinema with the best new and archive films. Bringing otherwise rarely-screened work to the North East, Baltic Cinema also expands our exhibitions, offering a chance to explore further some of the themes they raise.

Baltic Cinema has five strands:

Currents presents new work from across the world

Sources expands on our exhibitions

Selected shows films selected by our artists and partners

Quayside Kino is a monthly screening for families and children

News From Home offers films on and from the North East, for the people who live here

All regular screenings take place in our Level 1 Cinema. In addition, you can catch free drop-in films in Front Room every week. See full programme of screenings here.

Baltic Cinema is supported by Film Hub North with National Lottery funding on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network.

We want our events to be inclusive and accessible. If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please email [email protected]. Ahead of your visit, you can find out about Baltic's facilities and accessibility here.

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Host or Publisher Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art